So, I learned about love this year.
Thirty-three years on this planet and I finally learned what it means to love and be IN love.
Yes, I understand what it means to love my children, my mother and grandfather.
...but this love between lovers. I never knew what it meant until now.
The first moment that cupid's damned arrow pierces your aorta and bleeds you internally, causing you to lose all focus due to blood loss. In place of blood flow, the essence of your object of affection is injected into your veins and therein lies the need to be nourished by the person’s mere existence forever.
I get it. He or she becomes the current in which a new life force is carried.
And that’s all well and good when everything is happy and the feeling is mutual. It’s sugar dandy when the object of your affection is also suffering from internal bleeding and has opened his or her veins to be nourished by you. It becomes realized that each of you have taken residence in each other’s core of being, flowing through limbs, and tissue and organs…especially the heart, Pooling and swirling within each chamber, warming that cherished muscle and forcing it to pulse and contract intensely when the mere thought of him or her crossed your mind.
The heat rises as he or she flows through your veins. The body is on fire and radiates a warm, golden glow. Everyone can tell you’re in love. It’s written all over you. It’s written all over him…or her.
When the two of you kiss, the surrounding world pauses out of respect for the love the two of you have created.
If only it could last forever…
If you’re lucky, it will. If you’re like me, you just get hooked and strung out.
If you’re like me, you’ll find that he or she is nothing more than a glorified dime bag of smack.
The moment he or she splits, says adios. The moment he or she disappears, without even an illustration of a sad Basset hound with a caption that reads “Sowwy” or some cute shit like that, on a Hallmark E-Card awaiting you in your inbox the night you got stood up from what posed to be your last date….
Not that I would know anything about that…
Yeah, but the moment he or she vanishes and leaves traces of their love within your veins, you experience the other side of love. The side that makes you cry until your eyes are bloated. It is the side that makes food taste like dead leaves and nauseates you. This is not your nourishment and your body rejects it. While you rest your head on that porcelain pillow in the bathroom, tears streaming, mouth tasting of vomit, stomach aching from hunger and nausea at once, you then realize how truly hooked you were on the guy…or girl.
Your friends will tell you that you’ll get over it. They will hate him or her for you every time a song comes on the radio that reminds you of him or her and yanks hysterical sobbing from the depths of your soul. They will make voo-doo dolls and curse his name for you, while you remain in love…still forgiving, still gracious still in wonderment of him...or her.
You will wake up one day and become productive after weeks or months of walking around your house in a Snuggy and watching true crime stories on basic cable. Ice Cream begins to taste good. You’ll try to accomplish simple things like bathing and putting gas in the tank of your car. More time will pass, and you’ll accomplish more things. Your career is going well and you’ve developed some semblance of a social life. You try to date, but every guy or girl ain’t even a blip on your love radar.
You will live your life without him or her and you will do great things, but he or she will always be there, doing a poorly coordinated tap dance LOUDLY, all throughout your brain. That horrible hoofing, giving you headaches and making it impossible to fully enjoy anything you achieve.
You were gutted. Guts exposed. Bled profusely and hooked on a drug.
But this is what’s interesting about love…and how you know its love…
Despite all of the insurmountable hurt and damage you have or you are enduring, you still love the shit out of him or her and you don’t want them to feel even an ounce of what you feel. As a matter of fact, if you knew he or she was hurting, you’d carry their pain on top of your own.
If he or she came to your doorstep and silently extended his or her hand to you, every moment of pain you’ve felt would dissolve in the heat rising from your veins again.
Love is a maintainence of graciousness and forgiveness. Love is a ride through the hurt without giving up the ability to sincerely care for the one hurting you. Love is taking a Tyson right hook to the jaw if it means the best for the one you love. Love is letting him or her go because that is what his or her life demands. Love is carrying the burden of hurt and never, ever ceasing to love despite its weight and agony.
At least that’s what I’ve learned so far…
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